March 28, 2015

3-D printing hobbyists have managed to print up a functioning Colt CM901 assault rifle, what’s said to be the heaviest caliber rifle to ever roll off the presses of a 3-D printer. [via TIME]

Hobbyists at PrintedFirearm.com posted an animated GIF of the 3-D printed rifle firing off several rounds at a shooting range.

The CM901 fires 7.62 mm rounds, a heavier caliber bullet than that of the AR-15. The gun also recoils with greater force, requiring gunsmiths to print up sturdier plastic parts that can withstand the stresses of multiple rounds. After a period of trial and error, the team claims the CM901 can fire off several rounds “with little to no issues.”

In other words, hobbyists in the 3-D printed arms race, for better or worse, are getting more bang for their buck.

November 6, 2014

As 3-D printed guns have evolved over the past 18 months from a science-fictional experiment into a subculture, they’ve faced a fundamental limitation: Cheap plastic isn’t the best material to contain an explosive blast. Now an amateur gunsmith has instead found a way to transfer that stress to a component that’s actually made of metal—the ammunition. Wired reports.

Michael Crumling, a 25-year-old machinist from York, Pennsylvania, has developed a round designed specifically to be fired from 3-D printed guns. His ammunition uses a thicker steel shell with a lead bullet inserted an inch inside, deep enough that the shell can contain the explosion of the round’s gunpowder instead of transferring that force to the plastic body or barrel of the gun. Crumling says that allows a home-printed firearm made from even the cheapest materials to be fired again and again without cracking or deformation. And while his design isn’t easily replicated because the rounds must be individually machined for now, it may represent another step towards durable, practical, printed guns—even semi-automatic ones.

October 3, 2014

On Wednesday, Cody Wilson’s libertarian non-profit Defense Distributed revealed the Ghost Gunner, a $1,200 computer-controlled (CNC) milling machine designed to let anyone make the aluminum body of an AR-15 rifle at home, with no expertise, no regulation, and no serial numbers.

Since then, he’s sold more than 200 of the foot-cubed CNC mills—175 in the first 24 hours.

That’s well beyond his expectations; Wilson had planned to sell only 110 of the machines total before cutting off orders.

October 1, 2014

When Cody Wilson revealed the world’s first fully 3-D printed gun last year, he showed that the “maker” movement has enabled anyone to create a working, lethal firearm with a click in the privacy of his or her garage. Now he’s moved on to a new form of digital DIY gunsmithing. And this time the results aren’t made of plastic. Wired reports.

Wilson’s latest radically libertarian project is a PC-connected milling machine he calls the Ghost Gunner. Like any computer-numerically-controlled (or CNC) mill, the one-foot-cubed black box uses a drill bit mounted on a head that moves in three dimensions to automatically carve digitally-modeled shapes into polymer, wood or aluminum. But this CNC mill, sold by Wilson’s organization known as Defense Distributed for $1,200, is designed to create one object in particular: the component of an AR-15 rifle known as its lower receiver.

That simple chunk of metal has become the epicenter of a gun control firestorm. A lower receiver is the body of the gun that connects its stock, barrel, magazine and other parts. As such, it’s also the rifle’s most regulated element. Mill your own lower receiver at home, however, and you can order the rest of the parts from online gun shops, creating a semi-automatic weapon with no serial number, obtained with no background check, no waiting period or other regulatory hurdles. Some gun control advocates call it a “ghost gun.” Selling that untraceable gun body is illegal, but no law prevents you from making one.

Exploiting the legal loophole around lower receivers isn’t a new idea for gun enthusiasts—some hobbyist gunsmiths have been making their own AR-15 bodies for years. But Wilson, for whom the Ghost Gunner is only the latest in a series of anti-regulatory provocations, is determined to make the process easier and more accessible than ever before.

June 11, 2014

A new Kickstarter campaign that launched today, the Discov3ry, is an affordable paste extruder that can easily be added to almost any existing 3D printer. If your printer uses plastic filament, it is almost certainly compatible with the Discov3ryand will expand the range of materials beyond molten plastic, to include a wide range of pastes.

Some other materials that can be 3D Printed : Silicone, Polyurethane, Wood Filler, Clay, Ceramics, Icing Sugar, Nutella, Conductive Paint ... and many pastes that we haven't even thought of trying to print with yet.

Dai-Nippon Printing has developed a security program that prevents 3D printers from producing firearms and copyrighted objects. The security program will be put to practical use in 2017, the company said in a news release, reports the WSJ.

According to Dai-Nippon Printing, the program is capable of cross-checking the blueprint data of an object inserted in a 3D printer with a database of items that require legal permission for manufacturing. Upon detecting a blacklisted entry such as harmful guns or copyrighted material, the program will automatically shut the 3D printer down. The database for blacklisted objects could be continually updated to include new models of firearms or copyrighted objects, the company said.

Security concerns about the high-tech machines, which can duplicate items in three dimensions, have been on a rise around the globe. Earlier this month, the arrest of a man who created two lethal guns using a ¥50,000 3D printer dominated Japan’s headlines.

May 16, 2014

A burgeoning subculture of 3-D printed gun enthusiasts dreams of the day when a lethal firearm can be downloaded or copied by anyone, anywhere, as easily as a pirated episode of Game of Thrones. But Yoshitomo Imura, the 27-year-old Japanese man arrested last week for allegedly owning illegal 3-D printed firearms, did more than simply download and print other enthusiasts’ designs. He appears to have created some of his own. [via Wired]

... Imura is one of a growing number of digital gunsmiths who saw the potential of that controversial breakthrough and have strived to improve upon the Liberator’s clunky, single-shot design. Motivated by a mix of libertarianism, gun rights advocacy and open-source experimentation, their innovations include rifles, derringers, multi-round handguns and the components needed to assemble semi-automatic weapons. Dozens of other designs are waiting to be tested.

May 9, 2014

A 27-year-old man who allegedly made handguns with a 3-D printer was arrested Thursday on suspicion of illegal weapons possession, the first time Japan’s firearms control law has been applied to the possession of guns made by this method. [via The Japan Times]

The suspect, Yoshitomo Imura, an employee of Shonan Institute of Technology in Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, had the plastic guns at his home in Kawasaki in mid-April, the police said. No bullets have been found.

The police launched an investigation earlier this year after Imura posted video footage online of the guns, which he claimed to have produced himself, along with blueprints for them, according to investigative sources.

Imura, who purchased a 3-D printer for around ¥60,000 on the Internet, was quoted as telling investigators during the search, “I produced the guns, but I didn’t think it was illegal.

The technology was developed by researchers at Manchester Metropolitan University and helped along by funding from city police. The developers inked a deal with scanner/detector company Radio Physics Solutions to make the device commercially available, as soon as this spring. They’re currently running a campaign on the crowdfunding site Syndicate Room to hurry along that process.

January 22, 2014

Cody Wilson, who leads the 3D-printed gun group Defense Distributed, signed a quarter-million dollar deal with Simon & Schuster’s Gallery imprint in December to write a non-fiction book chronicling his quest to create the first fully 3D-printable lethal weapon. Forbes reports.

The book’s working title is Negative Liberty, Wilson says, based on a principle of freedom from external restraints in libertarian political theory.

The whole point to me is to add to the hacker mythology and to have a very, very accurate and contentious portrayal of what we think about the current political situation, our attitude and political orientation, a lasting remark,” he says. “It won’t be a manifesto. But culturally I hope to leave a couple of zingers…a touchstone for the young, disaffected radical towards his own political and social development, that kind of thing.

December 10, 2013

The US Senate has rejected calls to update the law in response to the advent of plastic guns made with 3D printers. Engineering & Technology reports.

The Democrat-led body passed a bill last night that extends the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988, which bans firearms that can pass undetected through metal detectors, for another 10 years. The Republican-led House of Representatives approved the bill last week.

President Barack Obama signed the legislation into law before the ban was to expire at midnight, but some Democrats have criticised a failure to close what are seen as loopholes created by new technologies, such as 3D printing, an aide said.

November 25, 2013

After the release of two 3D-printable firearms was met by warnings from lawmakers, Philadelphia has become the first US city to ban 3D-printed guns. The Philadelphia city council voted unanimously to pass a bill banning the practice on Thursday, reports The Verge.

Philadelphia's response to this new flavor of firearms manufacturing isn't surprising; According to FBI crime statistics, Philly reported 331 murders in 2012, ranking it among the most violent cities in the US.

Action against 3D-printed firearms is also being taken at the national level. It took the State Department only days to get plans for the Liberator pulled offline, and Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is currently looking to extend a federal law banning "undetectable' firearms to guns built in 3D printers. But measures like these are largely preemptive right now, since 3D-printed guns are still highly experimental, unreliable, and expensive. At the moment, it's still much easier to buy a small handgun on the street or even build an undetectable AK-47 with the right plans.

November 15, 2013

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) this week released videos of tests of plastic guns made with 3D printers that show some exploding on the first shot. The explosions could injure users, the testing found. ComputerWorld reports.

The ATF has been testing guns made with 3D printers using two commonly used thermoplastic materials over the past year to determine how safe the weapons are.

Guns made using one of the two thermoplastics tested, a polymer from VisiJet, never lasted more than one shot before exploding. The other material, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), could produce a gun that fired 8 times without incident.

November 7, 2013

According to their press release, Solid Concepts, a provider of additive manufacturing, 3D printing, rapid prototyping, tooling and injection molding services in North America, has manufactured the world’s first 3D Printed Metal Gun using a laser sintering process and powdered metals.

We’re proving this is possible, the technology is at a place now where we can manufacture a gun with 3D Printing,” says Solid Concepts’ Vice President of Manufacturing Kent Firestone. “As far as we know, we’re the only 3D Printing Service Provider with a Federal Firearms License (FFL). Now, if a qualifying customer needs a unique gun part in five days, we can deliver.

November 1, 2013

According to The Verge, Cody Wilson, creator of the 3D-printed gun, is raising $50,000 on the crowdfunding site Indiegogo to develop a service aimed at returning the digital currency Bitcoin to its anarchist roots.

Dark Wallet is an app for storing, sending, and receiving Bitcoin, with some extra security features built in. As law enforcement cracks down on services using Bitcoin to evade authorities — the recent bust of the underground drug market Silk Road being the most notable example — Wilson and his co-founder Amir Taaki decided it was important to add new protections.

To accomplish this, Taaki and developer Pablo Martin built a protocol called "trustless mixing." This tactic, which will be built into Dark Wallet, allows a group of Bitcoin users to mix their coins together into one big transaction before it is encoded into the "blockchain," the currency's public ledger.

Read more and watch Cody Wilson present The Dark Wallet, an "unsystem project".

October 25, 2013

In what is believed to be the first case of its kind, officers in Manchester on Thursday seized a printer and other components potentially used in the manufacture of firearms during a raid. Sky reports.

In a statement Greater Manchester Police said: "Component parts for what could be the UK's first ever 3D gun have been seized by Greater Manchester Police.

"During the searches, officers found a 3D printer and what is suspected might be a plastic clip and a 3D trigger which could be fitted together to make a viable 3D gun.

"It they are found to be viable components for a 3D gun, it would be the first ever seizure of this kind in the UK. The parts are now being forensically examined by firearms specialists to establish if they could construct a genuine device.

"A man has been arrested on suspicion of making gunpowder and remains in custody for questioning."

October 7, 2013

According to The Telegraph, security officials fear criminals in the UK could use 3D printers to develop weapons and are urgently looking at ways to combat the threat.

There is no evidence so far of weapons being created in such a way in the UK but the Home Office is concerned.

The threat was highlighted in its serious and organised crime strategy which warned: “We need to develop countermeasures for the imminent risk that 3D printing will facilitate the manufacture of weapons or parts of weapons.

September 20, 2013

The people behind the first 3D-printable gun have quietly launched a brand new search engine for 3D-print models. The site, defcad.com, is currently in alpha release but even without press attention its library has quickly grown to nearly 75,000 files. Like The Pirate Bay, the new search engine allows users to add links without storing any of the files on its own servers. “We hope to build a piece of infrastructure to help stem the next wave of the IP wars in advance,” founder Cody Wilson tells TorrentFreak.

... “In March of this year, seeing an opportunity to expand the DEFCAD concept to fight the prevailing ideas about intellectual property in the entire physible space, I split Defense Distributed and DEFCAD and turned the latter into another company,” Wilson tells TorrentFreak.

“The idea was to move away from direct hosting to employ the first amendment victories won by Google in the courts and become a meta-search engine as a more robust way of spreading and preserving physibles. We hope to build a piece of infrastructure to help stem the next wave of the IP wars in advance, if you will.”

DEFCAD raised a significant amount of funds and has now quietly rolled out the meta-search engine to the public on DEFCAD.com. While still labeled as an Alpha release the site already indexes more than 74,000 files, all stored on external sites.... For now the most downloaded files on the new meta-search engine are, perhaps fittingly, guns. With more than 6,000 downloads The Liberator v1.1 is the most popular, followed by other gun designs, the FOSSCAD Atlas SSR and DMR Shanrilivan with over 5,000 downloads.

September 2, 2013

Kyle McDonald’s take on the Liberator, the world’s first 3D-printed gun, is rather different: He turned it into a teapot. Andy Greenberg reports for Forbes.

Earlier this week McDonald, a Brooklyn-based artist and a member of the hacker art collective Free Art and Technology Lab, revealed a collection of “absurd variations” on the 3D-printed gun that he says are meant to undermine its grave depictions as either a security threat to be feared or a tool of liberation to be championed. “My motivation was basically to break down the fear with humor, to get people to kind of remember that this file is out there and that everyone has access to it, that we can take it into our own hands,” he says.

July 25, 2013

A few months after Cody Wilson of the Austin, Texas, based organization Defense Distributed revealed and successfully test-fired the world's first functional, fully 3D-printed gun, a pistol known as "The Liberator," someone else in Canada has now gone ahead and developed and shot a bullet out of what they claim is the world's first fully 3D-printed rifle. [via TheVerge].

Nicknamed "the Grizzly," — in honor of the Canadian built Sherman Tanks of WWII — the rifle appears in a YouTube video posted online yesterday by username "ThreeD Ukulele."

As the video creator explains in the title card, the weapon is a .22-caliber long rifle of the single shot variety, fabricated using a Stratasys Dimension 1200es 3D printer.

What does any of this prove? Poor security checks in both cases, and an issue that should be adressed. What of a plastic detector? And that the media is desperately looking for ways to make headlines...

His interview is insightful and answers a question I've had on my mind following the removal of the Liberator's blueprints from defcad: Was that to be the last we would hear of Cody Wilson? The answer in this interview is no. Wilson says he "expects the US government to react to some paperwork he has just handed in, in the next 30 days. Justice will then decide what we will do with this kid".

June 15, 2013

On June 12th, Council Member Lewis Fidlar (D-Brooklyn) proposed a bill to regulate 3D-printed guns in New York. The bill would make it illegal to produce any firearm via 3D printer unless the maker is a licensed gunsmith. Additionally, the gunsmith would have to notify the NYPD and register the 3D-printed weapon within 72 hours of its creation. Motherboard reports.

Cody Wilson has stayed quiet on his Twitter account, but he sent an email to The Epoch Times, stating "Such legislation is a deprivation of equal protection and works clear ignorance of Title I and II of U.S. gun laws [the Gun Control Act and National Firearms Act, respectively].

... New York was the first state to propose a bill that opposes 3D printed weapons, but it certainly won't be the last. Expect the gun control conversation--and the nascent 3D-printed copyright debate--to only get more complicated from here on out.

June 13, 2013

A new bill to regulate 3D printed guns was introduced by Council Member Lewis Fidler (D-Brooklyn) on June 12. The Epoch Times reports.

The bill would amend the New York administrative code to make it illegal to use a 3D printer to create any part of a firearm unless the person is a licensed gunsmith. A gunsmith using a 3D printer to print any part of a gun would be required to notify the NYPD and register it within 72 hours.

Proposed revisions to the code include language ensuring 3D printed guns fall under the same regulations as other firearms. This includes clarification on systems to feed bullets, requirements for a serial number, and regulations against destroying weapons.

May 30, 2013

Given the NRA’s image as an organization defending the rights of Americans to own guns, you might think that 3D printing enabling the proliferation of weapon production would be a cause the organization would support. The problem? Despite its claim to be a sportsmen’s civil rights group, the NRA is funded in large part by gun manufacturers, whose motives and goals don’t always overlap with those of the organization’s membership. Salon reports.

In this new frontier of printed guns, a criminal can simply print off a metal-detector invisible gun for as little as $25, use it in a crime, and destroy it, only to make another one. There are no background checks to avoid, no worries about handling a “hot” gun, and no need to risk being caught buying an illegal weapon. ... In addition to being untraceable, printed guns are made to be identical and there are no distinguishing marks to prove that a bullet came out of a specific gun (e.g., all Liberators are exactly the same and there is no way to link a bullet used in a murder to a specific Liberator pistol).

To put the potential for this situation to spiral out of control into perspective: Less than two weeks after the release of The Liberator, a new design, called the “Lulz Liberator,” was released onto the internet. This design can hold 9 bullets instead of The Liberator’s 1, is cheaper (costing only $25), and is more resilient and less likely to misfire. If such improvements can be made in less than two weeks, imagine what could be developed by the end of the year, or in five years.

... So how will the group respond to the printed gun invention – and potential proliferation of weapons? Will it back gun owners’ rights to more weapons? Or seek to protect the traditional gun manufacturers, by intervening?

Either way, how the organization approaches the issue will reveal much about its true nature. And with the potential industry burgeoning, this decision point is fast approaching.

May 23, 2013

A baby’s life has been saved in the US by using a device to help him breathe created by a 3D printer. The Independent reports.

Doctors working with Professor Scott Hollister, a biomedical engineer at the University of Michigan, used a 3D printer to make a device like a vacuum cleaner hose which was implanted into Kaiba’s chest to act as splint to hold his airway open.

Three weeks after the operation in February 2012 – which has only now been reported, in The New England Journal of Medicine – he was taken off the ventilator and has not had trouble breathing since.

On Sunday, 48-year-old industrial technician Jeff Heeszel uploaded a video of his friend shooting a 3D-printed bullet from a shotgun. The bullet worked. Not as well as a regular bullet, but, remember, it was made at home on a machine. The Huffington Post reports.

These bullets are fairly simple and fast to make. In the video, Heeszel says it took about an hour to print the first slug he shoots. He made it on his friend Tony Griffy's $800 3D printer, Heeszel told Wired.

... Griffy doesn't plan to go into production of 3D weapons or sell them. "It’s really, honestly, just for fun.

May 16, 2013

In the 3D-printed future, politicians who oppose the NRA might do best by aligning themselves with the RIAA if the YouTube takedown of a video of Defense Distributed's Cody Wilson successfully firing the first all-3D-printed gun is a harbinger. PCMag reports.

The visual evidence of Wilson's triumph, the greatest marketing tool he has, has been pulled by a claim from Warner Chappell, copyright holder for Patrick Cassidy's "Funeral March," which played over footage of him firing the Liberator.

... Wilson feels that the commotion caused by the Liberator and the YouTube takedown that's related to RIAA-related regulations shows the hand of politicians. "[T]hey're demonstrating to some of the people that know that they're reactionaries and that they would like to control and manage the future, and that's not what this technology means," he said specifically about 3D printing but which applies to his views regarding all technology.

... And that's the biggest effect technology, including 3D printing, may have on society. It's not in what it creates but in what it destroys: the false dichotomies propagated in U.S. politics. First Amendment versus Second Amendment, blue state versus red state, RIAA artists versus NRA members, all blown apart with a single-shot, 3D-printed gun.

May 12, 2013

The exact title of the Daily Mail's article is in fact: "How Mail On Sunday 'printed' first plastic gun in UK using a 3D printer- and then took it on board Eurostar without being stopped in security scandal".

Good grief. Anything for a scoop. In their own words:

We built the weapon, which is capable of firing a live round, from blueprints available on the internet – then smuggled it on to a packed Eurostar train.
Two reporters passed completely unchallenged through strict airport-style security to carry the gun on to a London to Paris service in the weekend rush-hour, alongside hundreds of unsuspecting travellers.

May 11, 2013

While much of the talk on Defense Distributed focuses on firearms, Cody Wilson says the effort is about so much more. ”This project is a way for me to do everything I was ever interested in all at the same time. I want to represent this position in a very pure, forceful way, and I think we did it,” he said. VentureBeat reports.

To understand that position, you first have to understand the idea of “crypto-anarchy,” which holds that the most effective route to political freedom is a combination of unhindered access to information protected by the hard math of cryptography. Wilson, a crypto-anarchist himself, argues that everyone has a right to download their own firearms regardless of how many governmental bodies say they shouldn’t.

That’s where 3D printers come in. Because the technology enables us to digitize and replicate physical objects, 3D printers give crypto-anarchists (or even just gun enthusiasts) a powerful new tool to circumvent governmental control:

May 10, 2013

Though the U.S. government ordered that the files for the 3D Printed gun be taken down for fear of international arms proliferation, the designs are out there, accessible through sites such as The Pirate Bay and the "Makers" are presumably still free to print it and whatever else they want with their own 3D printers (such as the MakerBot Replicator 2 or 3DSystems CubeX9). TechNewsDaily reports.

But makers without their own equipment also have the option of ordering various objects from 3D printing services such as i.materialise, Sculpteo and Shapeways. Each service offers users the opportunity to shop existing designs as well as create and use their own.

... This puts manufacturers of 3D-printed materials in a gray area from a legal standpoint. Questions arise – could 3D printers and print manufacturers be bound to turn suspicious customers over to authorities? And what are the liability repercussions if, say, a car component is manufactured and then fails? When you consider that smokers have successfully sued tobacco companies, these questions don’t seem so far-fetched.

... Cody Wilson doesn’t see the government's takedown demand of the Liberator’s blueprints as a defeat. 'This is the conversation I want."... "Can there be defense trade control in the era of the Internet and 3D printing?”

Senator Leland Yee plans to introduce legislation to ban 3D-printed gun technology in order to "ensure that it is not used for the wrong purpose with potentially deadly consequences." C/net reports.

California Senator Leland Yee announced Tuesday his plan to propose a law that would ban the technology used to create 3D-printed guns.

"While I am as impressed as anyone with 3-D printing technology and I believe it has amazing possibilities, we must ensure that it is not used for the wrong purpose with potentially deadly consequences," Yee said in a statement. "I plan to introduce legislation that will ensure public safety and stop the manufacturing of guns that are invisible to metal detectors and that can be easily made without a background check.

Defense Distributed's 3D-printable file for the “Liberator” was downloaded 100,000 times in the first two days, a member of the group told Andy Greenberg from Forbes.

The gun’s CAD files have been ten times more popular than any component the group has previously made available.

The controversial gun-printing group is hosting those files, which include everything from the gun’s trigger to its body to its barrel, on a service that has attracted some controversy of its own: Kim Dotcom’s Mega storage site. Although the blueprint is only publicly visible on Defense Distributed’s own website Defcad.org, users who click on it are prompted to download the collection of CAD files from Mega.co.nz, which advertises that it encrypts all users’ information and has a reputation for resisting government surveillance.

Cody Wilson, Defense Distributed’s 25-year-old founder, says that the group chose to use Mega mostly because it was fast and free. But he also says he feels a degree of common cause with Kim Dotcom. “We’re sympathetic to Kim Dotcom,” says Wilson. “There are plenty of services we could have used, but we chose this one. He’s down for the struggle.

May 8, 2013

James Coleman of 3DPrintingIndustry picks up on an important fact amidst the media storm surrounding the news of the first entirely 3D Printed Gun. Here in Europe, journalists and TV channels such as BFMTV have made headlines stating that the blueprint available on defcad is for an undetectable firearm — which as Coleman points out, is not the case.

Opinions are divided on the work that Defense Distributed is doing, but it appears that Cody Wilson and his team share the Congressman’s concern for the technology. This concern is revealed by the group’s (oft overlooked) decision to include a 6 oz. piece of steel in their plans for the “Liberator.” This design decision makes the handgun a “detectable” firearm. Aside from helping the group to comply with existing US law, it indicates that their personal aim is not to use 3D printing to produce the sort of undetectable weapon that the Congressman is concerned with.

The “Read Me” instructions that come with the CAD files give very explicit instructions about how to comply with existing law when assembling the “Liberator”. They refer to the steel as an “integral” part of the frame.

What makes the 3D-printed gun so dangerous is that it muddies the waters of the gun control debate in a way that makes it harder for proponents of gun control and technologists to agree on exactly what they mean. Dominic Basulto writes in The Washington Post.

We’re now able to imagine, create and manufacture things that were outside the realm of possibility for some of the most creative pioneers of 3D printing. Since the designs for the Liberator are available to download for free, should we even be regulating it as a gun—or as a piece of intellectual property? Should the CAD files being downloaded worldwide fall under Internet censorship guidelines?

... “Anywhere there’s a computer and an Internet connection, there would be the promise of a gun.” Well, not quite. You still need the printer, which costs about $8,000. But, as with all other electronics, the price probably will fall dramatically. Critics already perceived the recent gun bill to be inadequate to the challenge of gun violence; criminals and psychopaths need only wait for the printers to get cheaper before they can make all sorts of evil in their basements. And Congress will still be chasing the gun shows. . .

Is government ready for this? It seems no; too often our democratic institutions are still tilting at windmills that long ago became turbines.

May 7, 2013

A very interesting article in Mashable that looks into the legality of reproducing a handgun with a 3D printer — or whether it's a felony.

These are the questions that the community around Wilson and his non-profit, Defense Distributed, are asking themselves.

The answers lie in a 1988 law called the Undetectable Firearms Act, which had the goal of banning the production of plastic guns, as they are capable of passing through a metal detector without being spotted. As it happens, the law, which was renewed in 2003 — with no changes — will expire this year.

According to its text, it's illegal for anybody to "manufacture, import, sell, ship, deliver, possess, transfer or receive" a firearm that can't be detected once its grips, stocks and magazines are removed.

... Downloading and working on 3D-printable gun designs is not against the law — and, in case you're wondering, uploading them isn't either. Both Mocsary and another gun-law expert, New York University professor James Jacobs, agree that the law doesn't affect those actions, since those would be protected by the First Amendment.

But turning that blueprint into an actual gun, that's another issue. By all interpretations of the law, that's illegal.

Even Wilson himself recognizes that. That's why in the DefCad "Showcase" forum he posted a two-point disclaimer, telling the rest of the community that if they aren't licensed manufacturers, they should not print a plastic firearm capable of firing a bullet. That, wrote Wilson (who goes by the nickname Zinoziev — a Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician — on the forum), would be the first step toward committing a federal crime.

"Because of the public profile and interest over this kind of activity at the moment, you WILL be made an example of. You WILL go to federal prison, and you WILL never be able to own a firearm again," he wrote.